


spiderweb bruises

by himemiyaa



Series: goretober 2020 [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Childhood Trauma, Emetophobia, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26758507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himemiyaa/pseuds/himemiyaa
Summary: Mr. Spider has a lovely meal while Jon Sims runs away.
Series: goretober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949359
Kudos: 19





	spiderweb bruises

**Author's Note:**

> for october 2020 i'm trying to kick the shit out of my recent lack of writing by using aless-was-here's goretober prompts! here's day one, for the prompt "bruises." i asked my gc who to write about and they said everybody's favorite archivist, so here we are! hope y'all enjoy :)

Scattered across Jon’s skinny body are the bruises of an awkward childhood, some from his own pre-adolescent clumsiness, some from being shoved around by the older boys. They range in color from the yellow of a dandelion to deep black-purple. The freshest of these bruises are on his wrist courtesy of _that boy_ , the one he refuses to dignify with a name even as his grandmother hands off banknotes for his assistance around the house.

Jon is too small, too vulnerable to do everything his grandmother needs, a fact that _that boy_ likes to remind him of. Today, having found his favorite target walking numbly through the park with a cardboard children’s book in hand, the boy had clamped his hand around Jon’s wrist, breaking him out of his stupor and grabbing the book away from him.

“What’s this, Little Einstein? Huh?”

But then he had paled.

Books, Jon thinks, don’t do what that one did. Books, he knows, are safe; a compulsively consumptive hobby in his case, fair enough, but not dangerous. Jon’s lungs burn now as he runs away from Mr. Spider’s door.

He wonders what it means. That plate at the front of the book, the name _Leitner_ burnt into his mind eternally. Jon may be young but he isn’t foolish enough to think that he’ll see that boy again, not naive enough to have mistaken the brown on the pages for anything other than what it is. Books don’t do that, but what else could it have been? There’s no other explanation for it. Those horrid hairy legs belonged to a spider. There’s nothing else those could have been. That was no coincidence.

He runs, his chest seizing up, until he can’t run any further. Jon falls to his knees back in the park, crying out once in pain and taking a few shuddering breaths before he begins sobbing. The ever-present bruises on his knees begin to bleed, soaking through his trousers. He sits up slowly, body aching and stiff. There’s no one here to see him in his panic, but of course he’s too panicked to truly appreciate that.

He wonders if this was his fault. He wonders if he should’ve done something. But he is small, he is vulnerable, he is bruised and asthmatic and weak. What would he have done? Grabbed the back of that boy’s shirt and pulled? No, he would simply have been dragged in himself.

Jon vomits. The idea of having food in his stomach right now is sickening. He wonders if he’ll ever eat again, or if every time he sees a plate he will think of what Mr. Spider must have done to that boy. He will think of that often from now on, in more brutal detail and gruesome full color as he grows older.

He stands. He walks, trembling as he goes through the empty street. When he opens the door to his home his grandmother looks up from her own reading, face immediately descending into the sort of frown he knows means _again_?

“Where have you been?” she asks exhaustedly, and Jon has no answer. The bruise on his wrist has changed: thin, darker lines of burst blood vessels have appeared, interconnecting and overlapping with all of the beauty of a spider’s web.


End file.
